The Iron Lady
Short description
The Iron Lady portrays Margaret Thatcher, the first woman to serve as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, moving between her years in power and her later life in London. An elderly Thatcher, well past eighty, is visited by memories of her rise from a grocer's daughter to Downing Street, sustained throughout by her husband Denis. The film examines the personal cost of her political ambition as much as her career itself, tracing her entry into a male-dominated world and the divisions her time in office produced, without settling the question of how she should be judged.
Phyllida Lloyd directed, following Macbeth and Mamma Mia! in her filmography; Abi Morgan wrote the screenplay. Meryl Streep plays Thatcher, with Jim Broadbent as Denis, Olivia Colman as her daughter Carol, and Roger Allam, Susan Brown and Nick Dunning in supporting roles. Made for a modest 13 million dollars, the film returned 116 million worldwide, a strong result for a drama of its kind.
On IMDb it holds 6.4 from roughly 117,000 votes, and on TMDB 6.3 from a much smaller base of about 1,900. Critics rated it 5.7 from 231 reviews, below both audience figures — a gap suggesting viewers responded more warmly than reviewers did.
What's left behind the scenes
- According to Margaret Thatcher herself, who initially refused to watch the film, justifying this by saying that her career had been made "a kind of entertainment," Meryl Streep failed to capture her real image on screen.
- In preparation for her role, Meryl Streep attended a session of the House of Commons of the British Parliament in January 2011. There she observed a debate between British Prime Minister David Cameron and opposition leader Ed Miliband.
- Three of the actors involved in the film, Michael Cochrane, Rupert Vansittart, and John Sessions, also appeared in the television biopic "Margaret" (2009).
- Instead of the building of the British Parliament, Westminster Palace, the Manchester Town Hall, which visually resembles it, was used during filming. This neo-Gothic Victorian building was built in 1877 and has been used for this purpose many times before in the filming of Hollywood and British films.
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